The Stories We Tell by Patti Callahan Henry Read Free Book Online Page A

said you probably wouldn’t remember anything.”
    She doesn’t answer, because if there’s one thing a drunk can’t argue, it’s what they did or didn’t do while drunk. We’ve been here before and the familiarity makes me prickly. It’s been years—ten or more—but it still feels too close.
    Dr. Lewis enters the room. “Good afternoon,” she says.
    â€œYou don’t sleep?” I ask.
    â€œSometimes,” she says, smiling. She walks to Willa’s bedside. “How do you feel?”
    Amid the talk between patient and doctor, I meander to the window, pushing aside the vertical blinds to view the parking lot. I spot my car and then gaze past it to ever-present church spires reaching high, higher. Dr. Lewis and Willa talk about her pain level and her injuries, about how lucky she is that nothing is broken.
    â€œBut my head and eye,” Willa says. “They feel broken.”
    â€œYes,” Dr. Lewis says. “That’s the part we have to watch. You have a mild TBI—traumatic brain injury—and some swelling in the temporal lobe. We don’t know exactly what this will mean in the long or even short term. But usually it’s your memory that will be affected. It might return in little bits or not at all. Sometimes, though, nothing is affected. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. This isn’t like a broken bone or an infection that an antibiotic will cure.”
    I turn from the window. “Long-term damage?”
    â€œThis is something that only time will tell.”
    â€œMy eye?” Willa asks quietly, reaching up with her free hand to touch the very edges of the swelling.
    â€œWhen the swelling goes down, I expect your sight will be fine. You’re lucky; even though I hate to use that word, you are. You took quite a smack to the head, but your blood work is normal. Toxicology clean and hematocrit strong.”
    She continues in a foreign language about healing and injury, until these words jump out as if they were scrubbed to a high sheen, like foil stamping on paper. Toxicology Clean . I don’t know a temporal lobe from a hematocrit, but toxicology? This I know. I spin around. “What do you mean by ‘toxicology clean’?”
    â€œMeaning no drugs, no alcohol,” Dr. Lewis says.
    Willa makes a noise much like a deep breath mixed with a sob. “See?”
    â€œNo alcohol?” I ask. “When did you take this blood sample?”
    â€œWe always take it on admission after a car accident.”
    â€œI’m confused,” I say.
    â€œWhy?” The doctor squints at me as if I’m the one with the traumatic brain injury—a term I was unfamiliar with only days ago.
    â€œBecause my husband said she was drunk. Not just drunk but drunk as hell. And that he had to get her out of—”
    â€œNo,” the doctor says. “She was not drunk. I don’t have any idea what happened before the wreck, but not alcohol.”
    I turn to Willa. Tears run across the bridge of her nose. “Then why can’t I remember anything?”
    Dr. Lewis moves closer to the bed, placing her hand on Willa’s matted hair as if just touching her head is the only answer. It isn’t, of course. And now the questions will begin.

 
    five
    I’m not ready to ask Cooper the questions about what really happened. I need to know more about traumatic brain injury. I need to know how to defend Willa’s sobriety when her memory of the night has been as good as erased. I need something to stand on.
    It’s late evening and I’ve been home for only an hour. I open my laptop and search the internet for TBI, for concussion and symptoms. I read quickly, scanning for only the most important parts, wanting to be able to ask Dr. Lewis real questions. I absorb facts and statistics that mean nothing in real life. It seems to me that the only cure for a mild TBI is prevention. And we